We are well aware that our Lord was pleased to make use of a variety of symbolic utterances, but He often gently upbraided His disciples for accepting literally what He had intended only in its spiritual meaning. His teaching, as in His parables or in the command to wash one another's feet, was often in symbols, and ought ever to be received in the light of His own emphatic declaration, "The words I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."

The Old Covenant was full of ceremonial symbols; the New Covenant, to which our Savior alluded at the Last Supper, is expressly declared by the prophet to be "not according to the old." (Jeremiah 31:32, Hebrews 8:9). We cannot believe that in setting up this New Covenant the Lord intended an institution out of harmony with the spirit of this prophecy. The eating of His body and the drinking of His blood cannot be an outward act. They truly partake of them who habitually rest upon the sufferings and death of our Lord as their only hope and to whom the indwelling Spirit gives to drink of the fullness that is in Christ. It is this inward and spiritual partaking that is the true supper of our Lord.

The presence of Christ with His church is not designed to be by symbol or representation, but in the real communication of His own Spirit. Convincing of sin, testifying of Jesus, taking of the things of Christ, the Comforter communicates to the believer and to the church, in a gracious, abiding manifestation, the REAL PRESENCE of the Lord.